The Ice Caves

Verified against the spelunky.ai port v0.1.10 on 28 October 2026.

Where the areas before it are caves dug through solid ground, the Ice Caves are open space: platforms of dark rock and blocks of ice float over a drop with no floor, and a fall past the bottom of the level kills the player. The ice is slippery, and some platforms melt or fall. Yetis walk the platforms and UFOs fly between them, and the area holds the Moai, the Mothership and the Yeti lair.

The Ice Caves are levels 9 to 12, built in a room of their own, taller than the Mines' or the Temple's ^{[1] [2]}. Taking level 8's exit leads to the screen between levels, where the Tunnel Man may wait, and on to level 9; once two shortcuts are paid for, the title screen's Shortcut House has a door to level 9 ^{[3] [4]}. In the clip, the player takes level 8's exit, pays the Tunnel Man the last $500 of a shortcut, and level 9 loads, with Yetis and a UFO in view ^[5].

The level is laid out as the Mines' are, four rooms by four on a path from the top row to the bottom, from the Ice Caves' own layouts ^[6]. But the level's border has no floor: its blocks run down the sides and across the top only ^[7]. The layouts are mostly platforms in open air, so the bottom row of rooms opens onto nothing, and a player who falls more than 16 pixels below the bottom of the room loses 99 hearts ^[8].

The rock is dark blue, with one block in ten a block of ice ^[9], and some layouts add more ice, platforms that fall and thin ice ^[10]:

• Ice is slippery: standing on it, the player hardly slows down, unless he's crouching or wears Spike Shoes ^[11].
• Falling platforms drop after the player has stood on one for 20 steps (two-thirds of a second) ^{[12] [13]}.
• Thin ice melts under the player in 30 steps (1 second) ^{[14] [15]}.

One side room in two gets a side room's layout, and one of those may be ^[16]:

A level may also hold one of the area's special places:

The mothership's and the Yeti lair's rolls are the else branches of the Moai's, which every Ice Caves level takes until the Moai is made, so neither comes before it ^[25]. Unlike the other areas, the Ice Caves are never dark ^[26].

Level generation goes over every block outside the shops ^[27]:

A UFO destroyed by a thrown item or monster may eject an Alien. A Yeti lair has the Yeti King, and the Mothership the Alien Boss. The Ice Caves have no Bats, Snakes or Spiders, and no webs: the treasure script's webs skip them ^{[30] [31]}. The Ghost comes to a level the player stays on too long, as in every area.

• The drop. Falling off the bottom of the level kills the player (above).
• Spring Traps. One block in ten of plain rock, with four open tiles above it, more than 64 pixels from the entrance and the exit, gets a Spring Trap on top ^[32], which throws the player 16 pixels up and into a jump when he steps on it ^[33].
• Spikes, under the idol's ledge ^{[19] [34]}.
• Slippery ice, thin ice and falling platforms (above).

Shops come as in the Mines: a level's chance is 2 in its number (2 in 9 on level 9 down to 1 in 6 on level 12), in a side room beside the path, of the same seven kinds, and none once the Black Market has been made ^{[35] [36] [25]}.

Treasure is scattered as in the Mines, without the webs. The Ice Caves' rock holds more gems than any other area's: one block in 40 that isn't a gold vein holds a big sapphire, and rarer ones a big emerald, a big ruby or an item ^[37].

• The Moai, on one of levels 9 to 12, which hides the Hedjet.
• Kali's altars.
• The Mothership, with a free Jetpack inside ^{[38] [39]}.
• Shortcuts. In the screen after level 12, the Tunnel Man may ask for money toward the last shortcut ^[40].

• The room script makes a Yeti for a Y tile, but none of its layouts has one ^{[41] [25]}.
• Generation would put Scarabs under the Ice Caves' blocks on a dark level, which the Ice Caves never are ^[42].
• The border makes a row of blocks across the level 640 pixels down, outside the Ice Caves' room, which is 608 pixels tall, beside a commented-out row of Spikes ^[43]. Level generation goes over those blocks as over any other, so under every Ice Caves level, out of sight and out of reach, it scatters what it would on any floor: Rocks, Jars, gold bars or bones ^{[44] [25] [45]}.